We have had another busy few weeks in First Grade! We had a wonderful Thanksgiving Feast. Thanks so much to our amazing class moms for helping to make this special day possible for us. I am so thankful to work with you and your children. Here are some pictures below...
We have been doing an author study on the author Mo Williams. We have read many of his Pigeon stories, Elephant and Piggy, and his three Knuffle Bunny stories. The children LOVED his books and many choose to read them during free time:) We have been focusing on character traits, comparing and contrasting, and sequencing a story. We have also been busy working on reading with expression and fluency(which Mo's books are perfect for) . We have been using punctuation cues to help us read and changing our voices to match the character or the character's feelings. We learned that our reading needs to sound like talk and not like a robot:) The children have been doing a wonderful job.
The class just loved reading his books so much that we just had to write our very own versions of Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus. Then they used the Shadow Puppet App on the iPad to record themselves reading their stories with lots of expression. They were wonderful!!!!! We also used two fun Apps on the iPad called Mo on the Go and Don't Let the Pigeon use this App!
We have been involved in the Writing Process. The children chose a topic for their book and then created a web of ideas during the Pre-Writing stage and then just finished up the Drafting stage. Now we will move on to Revising and Editing this week.
In Math, we have been working on Addition and Subtraction and different strategies to use to help us. We used pictures, counters, ten frames, number lines, and we counted up and back. We worked on Fact Families and Doubles as well as our Fact Packs. We also worked on solving number stories and looking for key words to help us determine if we are to add or subtract. We Played a fun game called Sums of Ten to practice different ways to make ten and we played Roll a Subtraction Sentence. We also used the Apps Math Bingo and Hungry Fish to work on our facts.
We have wrapped up our unit on Communities. We learned about wants and needs and goods vs. services. Both First Grade classes joined together and created a map of "Kidsville", which is on display in the hallway. Stop by and check it out. We also created Popplets of a main street with Mrs. Burg and they are on display in the hall too.
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In Science, we have started our weather unit. We talked about different kinds of weather, temperature, and we have been graphing the weather. We made rain gauges to collect and measure rain water. The First and Third Grades have been busy composting. At lunch they have jars to collect fruit and vegetable peelings, etc... and then after lunch we add them to the compost bin along with leaves.
Special Events...
Coach Frankie arranged for the Sambulance to come to school. It was a wonderful program about safety for children. Here are some pictures below...
Mrs. Heiss's Third Graders came to our room and read to our class. They read with lots of expression and our class was very impressed!
We finished reading Marty McGuire, which was part of the Global Read Aloud. We connected with a First Grade class in Wisconsin and did many different activities with them and skyped with them a few times. We also connected with a First Grade class from Toronto too. At the end of the book the children were given a choice of a final activity to do. Some chose to make a poster about their favorite part. Some chose to sequence the story and some chose to make character webs. Some children even chose to make a song up about the book, which was super cute. I also had the children tell us what their favorite part or character was from the book. The short videos are below.
